I'd still say Perl's hashes are much better than logical name tables - a logical name can't be just any string like a hash key can.
Also, unlike Perl hashes, logical names seem to be bogged down by a couple of rules - such as in some contexts having to remember to follow them with colons, and not being able to use them at the start of a command. Also - is it practical to implement the equivalent of hashes of hashes in DCL? I'm aquainted with the use of "arrays" in DCL - they're not difficult, just cumbersome! Sandy Fleming > -----Original Message----- > From: Tom Edelson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: 03 September 2002 22:34 > To: Thomas R Wyant_III; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Perl vs. DCL (was RE: Set Default not Working) > > > I am one of the maintainers of a sizeable Perl application -- > order of magnitude thirty thousand lines of Perl -- and from my > perspective, the greatest advantage of Perl over DCL is that Perl > *can* be much better structured, thus easier to debug and to change. > > An aside: > > > * Perl does lists and hashes _much_ better than DCL; > > I agree, but the advantage isn't quite as enormous as some people > think, because they haven't noticed that DCL does have built-in > support for hashes. It just calls them logical name tables .... > > / Tom Edelson > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Thomas R Wyant_III [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 5:07 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Perl vs. DCL (was RE: Set Default not Working) > > ... > > Actually, though, I find myself these days having to make a > conscious decision whether to use DCL or Perl. Some of the issues are: > * A Perl script is almost always shorter; > * A DCL script works on any VMS system; > * Perl does lists and hashes _much_ better than DCL; > * If you're compute-intensive, Perl is at least an order of > magnitude faster; > * A Perl script can be made to work under multiple OSes; > * DCL requires fewer processes (or at least no more); > * Perl is still missing a few things that DCL will do. > > ... > >
